"I don't know. I suppose he has. He was only too anxious to speak, there in Mayberry."

"Humph! Well, IF he has, then--Hosy, sometimes I think this, all this pilgrimage of ours--that's what you used to call it, a pilgrimage--is goin' to turn out right, after all. Don't it remind you of a book, this last part of it?"

"A dismal sort of book," I said, gloomily.

"Well, I don't know. Here are you, the hero, and here's she, the heroine. And the hero is sick and the heroine comes to take care of him--she WAS takin' care of you afore I came, you know; and she falls in love with him and--"

"Yes," I observed, sarcastically. "She always does--in books. But in those books the hero is not a middle-aged quahaug. Suppose we stick to real life and possibilities, Hephzy."

Hephzy was unconvinced. "I don't care," she said. "She ought to even if she doesn't. _I_ fell in love with you long ago, Hosy. And she DID bring you here after you were hurt and took care of you."

"Hush! hush!" I broke in. "She took care of me, as you call it, because she thought it was her duty. She thinks she is under great obligation to us because we did not pitch her into the street when we first met her.

She insists that she owes us money and gratitude. Her kindness to me and her care are part payment of the debt. She told me so, herself."

"But--"

"There aren't any 'buts.' You mustn't be an idiot because I have been one, Hephzy. We agreed not to speak of that again. Don't remind me of it."

Hephzy sighed. "All right," she said. "I suppose you are right, Hosy.

But--but how is all this goin' to end? She won't go with us. Are we goin' to leave her here alone?"

I was silent. The same question was in my mind, but I had answered it. I was NOT going to leave her there alone. And yet--

"If I was sure," mused Hephzy, "that she was in love with Herbert Bayliss, then 'twould be all right, I suppose. They would get married and it would be all right--or near right--wouldn't it, Hosy."

I said nothing.

The next morning I saw her. She came to inquire for me and Hephzy brought her into my room for a stay of a minute or two. She seemed glad to find me so much improved in health and well on the road to recovery.

I tried to thank her for her care of me, for her sending for Hephzy and all the rest of it, but she would not listen. She chatted about Paris and the French people, about Monsieur Louis, the concierge, and joked with Hephzy about that gentleman's admiration for "the wonderful American lady," meaning Hephzy herself.

"He calls you 'Madame Cay-hoo-on,'" she said, "and he thinks you a miracle of decision and management. I think he is almost afraid of you, I really do."

Hephzy smiled, grimly. "He'd better be," she declared. "The way everybody was flyin' around when I first got here after comin' from Interlaken, and the way the help jabbered and hunched up their shoulders when I asked questions made me so fidgety I couldn't keep still. I wanted an egg for breakfast, that first mornin' and when the waiter brought it, it was in the shell, the way they eat eggs over here. I can't eat 'em that way--I'm no weasel--and I told the waiter I wanted an egg cup. Nigh as I could make out from his pigeon English he was tellin' me there was a cup there. Well, there was, one of those little, two-for-a-cent contraptions, just big enough to stick one end of the egg into. 'I want a big one,' says I. 'We, Madame,' says he, and off he trotted. When he came back he brought me a big EGG, a duck's egg, I guess 'twas. Then I scolded and he jabbered some more and by and by he went and fetched this Monsieur Louis man. He could speak English, thank goodness, and he was real nice, in his French way. He begged my pardon for the waiter's stupidness, said he was a new hand, and the like of that, and went on apologizin' and bowin' and smilin' till I almost had a fit.

"'For mercy sakes!' I says, 'don't say any more about it. If that last egg hadn't been boiled 'twould have hatched out an--an ostrich, or somethin' or other, by this time. And it's stone cold, of course.

Have this--this jumpin'-jack of yours bring me a hot egg--a hen's egg--opened, in a cup big enough to see without spectacles, and tell him to bring some cream with the coffee. At any rate, if there isn't any cream, have him bring some real milk instead of this watery stuff.

I might wash clothes with that, for I declare I think there's bluin'

in it, but I sha'n't drink it; I'd be afraid of swallowin' a fish by accident. And do hurry!'

"He went away then, hurryin' accordin' to orders, and ever since then he's been bobbin' up to ask if 'Madame finds everything satisfactory.' I suppose likely I shouldn't have spoken as I did, he means well--it isn't his fault, or the waiter's either, that they can't talk without wavin'

their hands as if they were givin' three cheers--but I was terribly nervous that mornin' and I barked like a tied-up dog. Oh dear, Hosy! if ever I missed you and your help it's in this blessed country."

Frances laughed at all this; she seemed just then to be in high spirits; but I thought, or imagined, that her high spirits were assumed for our benefit. At the first hint of questioning concerning her own life, where she lodged or what her plans might be, she rose and announced that she must go.

Each morning of that week she came, remaining but a short time, and always refusing to speak of herself or her plans. Hephzy and I, finding that a reference to those plans meant the abrupt termination of the call, ceased trying to question. And we did not mention our life at the rectory, either; that, too, she seemed unwilling to discuss. Once, when I spoke of our drive to Wrayton, she began a reply, stopped in the middle of a sentence, and then left the room.

Hephzy hastened after her. She returned alone.

"She was cryin', Hosy," she said. "She said she wasn't, but she was. The poor thing! she's unhappy and I know it; she's miserable. But she's so proud she won't own it and, although I'm dyin' to put my arms around her and comfort her, I know if I did she'd go away and never come back.

Do you notice she hasn't called me 'Auntie' once. And she always used to--at the rectory. I'm afraid--I'm afraid she's just as determined as she was when she ran away, never to live with us again. What SHALL we do?"

I did not know and I did not dare to think. I was as certain that these visits would cease very soon as I was that they were the only things which made my life bearable. How I did look forward to them! And while she was there, with us, how short the time seemed and how it dragged when she had gone. The worst thing possible for me, this seeing her and being with her; I knew it. I knew it perfectly well. But, knowing it, and realizing that it could not last and that it was but the prelude to a worse loneliness which was sure to come, made no difference. I dreaded to be well again, fearing that would mean the end of those visits.

But I was getting well and rapidly. I sat up for longer and longer periods each day. I began to read my letters now, instead of having Hephzy read them to me, letters from Matthews at the London office and from Jim Campbell at home. Matthews had cabled Jim of the accident and later that I was recovering. So Jim wrote, professing to find material gain in the affair.

"Great stuff," he wrote. "Two chapters at least. The hero, pursuing the villain through the streets of Paris at midnight, is run down by an auto driven by said villain. 'Ah ha!' says the villain: 'Now will you be good?' or words to that effect. 'Desmond,' says the hero, unflinchingly, as they extract the cobble-stones from his cuticle, 'you triumph for the moment, but beware! there will be something doing later on.' See? If it wasn't for the cracked rib and the rest I should be almost glad it happened. All you need is the beautiful heroine nursing you to recovery.

Can't you find her?"

He did not know that I had found her, or that the hoped-for novel was less likely to be finished than ever.

Hephzy was now able to leave me occasionally, to take the walks which I insisted upon. She had some queer experiences in these walks.

"Lost again to-day, Hosy," she said, cheerfully, removing her bonnet. "I went cruisin' through the streets over to the south'ard and they were so narrow and so crooked--to say nothin' of bein' dirty and smelly--that I thought I never should get out. Of course I could have hired a hack and let it bring me to the hotel but I wouldn't do that. I was set on findin' my own way. I'd walked in and I was goin' to walk out, that was all there was to it. 'Twasn't the first time I'd been lost in this Paris place and I've got a system of my own. When I get to the square 'Place delay Concorde,' they call it, I know where I am. And 'Concorde' is enough like Concord, Mass., to make me remember the name. So I walk up to a nice appearin' Frenchman with a tall hat and whiskers--I didn't know there was so many chin whiskers outside of East Harniss, or some other back number place--and I say, 'Pardon, Monseer. Place delay Concorde?' Just like that with a question mark after it. After I say it two or three times he begins to get a floatin' sniff of what I'm drivin'

at and says he: 'Place delay Concorde? Oh, we, we, we, Madame!' Then a whole string of jabber and arm wavin', with some countin' in the middle of it. Now I've learned 'one, two, three' in French and I know he means for me to keep on for two or three more streets in the way he's pointin'. So I keep on, and, when I get there, I go through the whole rigamarole with another Frenchman. About the third session and I'm back on the Concord Place. THERE I am all right. No, I don't propose to stay lost long. My father and grandfather and all my men folks spent their lives cruisin' through crooked passages and crowded shoals and I guess I've inherited some of the knack."

At last I was strong enough to take a short outing in Hephzy's company.

I returned to the hotel, where Hephzy left me. She was going to do a little shopping by herself. I went to my room and sat down to rest.

A bell boy--at least that is what we should have called him in the States--knocked at the door.

"A lady to see Monsieur," he said.

The lady was Frances.

She entered the room and I rose to greet her.

"Why, you are alone!" she exclaimed. "Where is Miss Cahoon?"

"She is out, on a shopping expedition," I explained. "She will be back soon. I have been out too. We have been driving together. What do you think of that!"

She seemed pleased at the news but when I urged her to sit and wait for Hephzy's return she hesitated. Her hesitation, however, was only momentary. She took the chair by the window and we chatted together, of my newly-gained strength, of Hephzy's adventures as a pathfinder in Paris, of the weather, of a dozen inconsequential things. I found it difficult to sustain my part in the conversation. There was so much of real importance which I wanted to say. I wanted to ask her about herself, where she lodged, if she was still singing at L'Abbaye, what her plans for the future might be. And I did not dare.

My remarks became more and more disjointed and she, too, seemed uneasy and absent-minded. At length there was an interval of silence. She broke that silence.

"I suppose," she said, "you will be going back to Mayberry soon."

"Back to Mayberry?" I repeated.

"Yes. You and Miss Cahoon will go back there, of course, now that you are strong enough to travel. She told me that the American friends with whom you and she were to visit Switzerland had changed their plans and were going on to Italy. She said that she had written them that your proposed Continental trip was abandoned."

"Yes. Yes, that was given up, of course."

"Then you will go back to England, will you not?"

"I don't know. We have made no plans as yet."

"But you will go back. Miss Cahoon said you would. And, when your lease of the rectory expires, you will sail for America."

"I don't know."